8:51 AM Mar 1, 1996

PREPARATORY WORK FOR SINGAPORE AGENDA

Geneva 1 Mar (Chakravarthi Raghavan) -- Trade diplomats at the World Trade Organization are expected to undertake a first exchange of views on the issues to be addressed at the first Ministerial Session of the World Trade Organization at Singapore in December 1996.

The discussion is expected to take place in the third week of March at the level of a meeting of Heads of Delegations to be chaired by the WTO Director-General Renato Ruggiero.

The way for this is expected to be opened up at an informal heads of delegations meeting Tuesday morning under the chairmanship of Amb. William Rossier of Switzerland, Chairman of the General Council, to discuss the structure of the preparatory work and this is expected to be formally agreed at a meeting of the General Council later next week.

Small groups of countries, at level of Ministers and senior officials, have so far been meeting outside the WTO framework, and outside Geneva, to discuss the new trade agenda, picking and choosing from the Marrakesh laundry list -- the subjects raised by individual ministers at the Marrakesh ministerial meeting in April 1994, all of which were mentioned in the concluding statement of the chairman of that meeting Sergio Abreu Bonilla.

The Abreu-Bonilla statement at Marrakesh mentioned relationship between trade system and internationally recognized labour standards; relationship between immigration policies and international trade; trade and competition policy, including rules on export financing and restrictive business practices; trade and investment; regionalism; interaction between trade policies and policies relating to financial and monetary matters, including debt, and commodity markets; international trade and company law; establishment of a mechanism for compensation for erosion of preferences; the link between trade, development, political stability and alleviation of poverty; and unilateral or extra-territorial trade measures.

The statement envisaged these issues being taken up by the Preparatory Committee for the WTO. That committee, which was preoccupied in solving the procedural problems for establishing the WTO, did not go into these questions, and left it to the WTO General Council.

The informal Heads of Delegations meeting under Ruggiero would be the first time that there would be a discussion on all or any of these items on which it is clear there is considerable difference among the delegations.

But these differences, some quite sharp, has not inhibited the WTO Director-General in pronouncing himself, in various public statements and speeches, in favour of this or the other new agenda proposals, and mostly promoting the new 'trade issues' sought to be put on the WTO agenda by the United States and the European Union.

The United States has been pushing for discussion at Singapore of the links between trade and workers rights, and more recently has formally asked the WTO Director-General to explore ways of undertaking anti-corruption measures against "recipients of bribes" in international trade.

In a letter to Ruggiero, reproduced by the WTO secretariat, in its daily press clipping file, the US Trade Representative Mickey Kantor has said that while the Uruguay Round accords have brought down trade 'traditional' barriers, less traditional ones, in particular 'bribery and corruption in the markets of WTO members', were undermining market access gains.

While the OECD was pursuing measures to combat bribery and corruption by those paying it, the WTO should pursue anti-corruption measures against recipients of bribes. The first step towards this, he said, could be through WTO rules for transparency, openness and due process, in government procurement in WTO members.

Very promptly, the peripatetic WTO head, speaking to reporters at Brisbane in Australia, said that he would follow up the US proposal and that he would "dedicate all my attention to this question, and I hope the governments will respond favourably".

He has also been similarly vigorous in promoting the EU drive to take up at Singapore work towards negotiating and incorporating a Multilateral Investment Agreement as a part of the WTO's single undertaking, and subject to its dispute settlement and trade-retaliation sanctions.

The EU has also been talking of competition issue being brought on the WTO trade agenda -- but has indicated that this should be a plurilateral agreement.

Ruggiero has also been favouring some 'informal discussions' on the trade-social clause issue and for some understanding to avoid any confrontations at Singapore.

An informal meeting of some 20 countries, convened by Canada on investment issue however found strong concerns and objections from a number of countries - with several arguing in favour of studies and discussions in the non-contractual forum of UNCTAD.

Another meeting of the socalled G-10 (key developing and developed countries) which discussed a possible Singapore agenda found considerable differences among the majors and the developing countries.

While the US and EU, for example, favoured accelerated tariff cuts by the developing countries, and making the plurilateral government procurement agreement a multilateral one, it was countered by the developing country participants emphasizing reportedly the need to look at the implementation of the Uruguay Round accords and the difficulties facing the developing countries, accelerated integration of the textiles and clothing trade into the WTO, by faster integration of quota regimes by the US and Europe.

There was also strong opposition to the consideration of a trade-social clause link in the WTO and addressing the investment issues -- where the US does not want it now in the WTO, preferring to pursue it in the OECD.

As some trade observers see it, the situation of a future agenda seems pretty tangled, and the many statements of Ruggiero to promote some of them, may have polarized issues.

Whether a preparatory process chaired by him would help untangle these remains to be seen.